Friendly Rivalry
by Bloodstained Comma
Summary: The cute new girl at The Wammys House presents a problem for Mello's severe inferiority complex, but his best friend doesn't seem keen on sticking up for him very much. Rated T for language.
1. Drama Queen

Christie severely disliked the boredom that summers brought to her. She didn't like school much more than she did boredom, but it seemed that with her parents gone, the monotony was worse than ever. She didn't have family to spend time with anymore. She had been an only child. Her parents had also been the only children in their families. Her grandparents on both sides and their siblings were dead and gone. The only thing she had left to do was watch the world through her window.

Christie was twelve years old, and she had been at The Wammy's House for a week. Following the tragedy that had left her void of family, the orphanage had immediately learned of her talent in music and the arts from friends of her parents', and they had also found out her amazing ability to solve problems in short periods of time from teachers at her schools. She had never thought of herself as overly amazing, but apparently this place did. She never wanted to be the top of anything. She never studied with her school work, she was always too busy drawing something or playing guitar. She didn't form an interest in the arts just to be noticed. She simply just liked it. If anyone thought of her as "special," that was their opinion, not hers. She had always thought of herself as normal, and she liked being normal. She didn't feel strange to the world that way.

She was still very new to The Wammy's House, but it wasn't too bad. Not many really disliked her there, but Christie didn't have any friends, either. She had never had many friends when she still had family, either, so that wasn't much of a change. If anything was bad, it was the fact that she couldn't stay up all night playing guitar anymore. She _could_ play as long as she didn't have it plugged in. If she didn't leave her amplifier unplugged, the obnoxious boy in the next room would hit the other side of the wall. There were times she wanted to beat Mello's face in. He had an inferiority complex that drove her mad and a smart mouth that rivaled her own sarcasm. She did have a complex over her sarcasm, she was perfectly willing to admit that… but with Mello, he was constantly in kill mode if he wasn't number one at _everything_. She wouldn't have put it past him to attempt learning guitar only to try to surpass her.

It seemed the only person who really disliked her _was_ Mello. The famous detective L used to reside at that very orphanage, and so the children there were being trained to take over for him. Apparently, Mello had been a likely candidate and he felt threatened by another boy named Near, and now her as well. She had assured him hundreds of times in just that week that she had no intention of taking over for L if they asked her to, and he had accused her – every time – of only saying that they would pick her over him in the first place because she thought she was smarter. The situation confused her a little, as she didn't even know much about L to begin with. From what she had heard, he came to the orphanage occasionally but didn't show his face to anyone while working on cases.

It was the middle of the day and she was sure that the rest of the children were headed to lunch. As Mello hadn't walked past her door to go outside earlier, it was presumable that he would stop to bother her on his way downstairs. If he kept it up, she might really consider breaking his nose. She hadn't said a thing to him when he first started with her on the day she got there. It was entirely unfair that she had to endure his taunting every day when she was too afraid of being chucked out on the side of the road to do anything about it. While she knew she wouldn't be kicked out of the orphanage, the concept still scared her. She had never wanted to beat anyone up before, not seriously.

"You're going to die of starvation if you keep with this not eating thing," she heard Mello's voice say from the door.

She looked up from her guitar to see Mello and his friend Matt standing in her doorway. Mello had his arms crossed, while Matt was too busy playing his PSP to even notice that they had stopped.

"Aye, what's this I'm hearing?" she said. "Could it even possibly be some form of concern? I'm surprised. I thought dogs didn't experience such feelings."

"_No_, it's not _concern_," he snapped. "I'm sort of happy I'm second. Who'd want to be like you or Near?"

"You mean smarter than you?" she said, looking back down at her guitar.

"See! I knew you thought you were smarter than me!"

"Well obviously I am, if these are the methods you're choosing to prove it with."

"What's that supposed to mean??"

"If you can't figure it out, I'm not telling you."

He was seething mad now, glaring at her with absolute distain. "I'd punch you if you weren't a girl."

"It would only be a bad thing for you to hit me if you were a boy," she said. "And judging by that hair, I'd say not, Blondie."

His face turned reddish. He turned and walked off quickly. Matt looked up from his game at Mello.

"Shouldn't you train your pet?" she asked Matt before he started to walk after Mello.

"Give me a week or two, I've only just finished paper-training him. He's quite stubborn, you kno–"

"Matt!" she heard Mello's voice yell in anger.

"Wha– oi!"

She laughed as she saw Mello's hand reach out and grab onto the Matt's goggles' strap, then pull him away from the door by it. Matt rubbed the side of his head where the strap was as he walked behind Mello.

"What?" he said.

"Don't give her material!" Mello said hysterically. "She'll hold on to that for weeks and probably say something in front of everyone!"

"I know," he said, laughing. "That's why it's funny."

"Whose side are you on??"

"Yours," Matt said. "But even you said she's cute, remember?"

"Yeah, whatever, that's not important, she's still a bitch."

"You really think so?"

"Yes!"

"Alright," Matt said, smirking.

Still fuming, Mello locked his jaw shut for a moment. He looked over at Matt, who was still smirking as they headed out to the dining area. Mello made a frustrated noise.

"Stop that."

"What?"

"I don't know," Mello said, "but you're thinking _something_."

"Obviously," Matt agreed. "I'm not exactly brain dead, am I?"

"Well, you're thinking _something_ perverted…"

Matt shrugged and went back to his video game. He and Mello sat at the table, where most of the other children already were. Mello noticed that Near was sitting off at the corner of the table and not talking to anyone, as was usual for freaks like him. Mello put his chin on his fist and glared at the wall across from him, until his view was mysteriously blocked by something… or someone.

"Damn, go and ruin the view of the wall I had, why don't you?" he said irritably to Christie.

"You're the one who suggested that I eat something," she shot at him. Matt looked up from his PSP, realizing that the argument would probably be a little more interesting than beating the same game for the hundredth time. She looked at Matt. "She's _your_ girlfriend, do something about her."

"She gets like this at her time of the month," he said quietly.

"Oh, poor thing, PMS is a terrible thing," she said quietly.

"Stop that!" Mello said, looking from Matt to Christie lividly.

"It's alright, love, we'll get you some chocolate in a minute," he said, patting Mello on the head. Mello glared. Matt laughed.

"Why do you have to stick up for her?" Mello said. "She doesn't need help, she's bitchy enough as it is!"

"Not as bitchy as you," Christie said with a shrug. "You're the Queen Bitch, Mello. I bow to you're supreme bitchy ruling powers."

"You think you're clever, don't you?" Mello said.

"I don't even have to think to know something," she said. "You'll only be as smart as me once you get over that."

"You're _not_ smarter than me!" he said, slamming his hand down on the table.

"I thought I was supposed to believe I was, according to your logic," she said. "Would you make up your mind already? I don't like not knowing who I am, it's rather confusing."

Mello only glared at her as he picked up his sandwich from the lunch tray in front of him. She couldn't possibly find anything else to say if he didn't give her any material to work with. Then again, she was good at it. So what if she was cute? He still hated her. She was also purposely stealing his best friend. He wasn't sure how or even why, but she was. He didn't see why she wouldn't just go make friends with _Near_, they were both equally appalling and dorky. She was definitely nicer to look at than Near, but that wasn't the point – the point was that he didn't like her in the least bit. Judging by the smirk on his face, _Matt_ thought that he liked her, but he _really_ didn't. Matt probably liked her, but Matt was a pervert, anyway.

"What're you looking at?" Christie said to Mello, holding her sandwich an inch from her mouth with a suspicious look on her face.

"Huh?" He hadn't realized he had been staring at her the entire time he was thinking.

"Stop looking at me," she said shiftily.

"I wasn't _looking at _you," he said. "Why would I _look at_ you?"

"To make me paranoid," she said.

"No one has to do anything to make _you_ paranoid."

"That's not an insult," she said. "I know full well I'm paranoid, thanks."

"Why do all the new kids always have to be so bitchy?" Mello said to Matt.

"To compete for the title of Queen," Christie said happily.

"I'll bet you were just dropped here because your family got tired of you. When can we send you back?"

Christie's expression changed drastically in a matter of seconds, from amusement to pure poison. Sensing danger, Matt immediately went back to his PSP. Mello crossed his arms and glared back. She dropped her sandwich on her plate and stood up. Mello's eyes widened a little – was she going to hit him? She was only a girl, but she was still rather scary. Obviously she wasn't going to hit him, as she turned and left the room unseen by anyone but Matt and Mello. They watched her walk up the stairs, most likely to go to her room. They then heard the quiet sound of a door slamming in the distance over the hubbub of the dining table. Matt looked at Mello. Mello looked back at him.

"What?" he said questioningly.

"I think you hit a rough patch there," Matt said.

"She was the one who started it!"

"Maybe," Matt said, "but think about where we are for a moment. You don't know _what_ happened for her to have been put here."

"Yeah…" Mello said slowly, "but she shouldn't have called me a bitch, if she hadn't then I would have been able to keep my mouth shut and I wouldn't have said that!"

Matt shrugged. "She'll probably never talk to you again now."

"Good!" Mello said, picking his sandwich back up. "I don't want her to anyway."

"Whatever you say."

"What's that mean??"

"Nothing," Matt said, looking up from his game. "I think if she's paranoid like she says, then it must be contagious. You've been showing an awful lot of it lately."

"Have not!"

"And you've also been quite a bit more contradictive than usual."

"But she's the one who's –"

"And you've been coming up with excuses for it left and right. I'd say you like her if you didn't keep insisting you don't."

"I _don't!_"

"I _know_, I just said that. Well, as long as you don't, maybe I'll have a go at –"

"But she's a _bitch!_" Mello said. "_Damn!_" he said in pain under his breath, feeling a cane whack him in the leg.

"Language, Mello," he heard the caretaker of the orphanage, Roger, say from behind him.

"Sorry, Roger," he said irritably. "Won't happen again."

"I would hope not," Roger said, "but as you've said that so many times in the past, I must say I am not fully inclined to believe it."

"_I'm not fully inclined to believe it_," Mello mimicked when Roger got out of earshot. "Wish the old fucker would just mind his own bussiness…"

"Yeah," Matt said distantly, absorbing into his videogame again.

Mello sat staring huffily at the wall, taking an occasional bite of his sandwich. If that little bitch hadn't wanted him to say something like that, then she shouldn't have been calling him a queen or whatever it was. She might have been book smart, but she seemed to be lacking in the common sense area. Of course it was likely that she had lost her family in some kind of tragedy. He wouldn't have gone that far if she hadn't been making him out to be some homo transsexual… _thing_. And Matt was helping her! PMS? That was simply insane. He glared at Matt as he took another bite of his sandwich. Some nerve he had, insulting him just to impress that girl. How could _anyone_ like someone like her? Matt made a frustrated noise and shut off his PSP.

"What?" Mello said defensively.

"I beat the damn game again…" he said with a sigh. "Now there's nothing to do…"

"You _could_ go outside for a change."

Matt gave a laugh. "You're kidding, right? Maybe I'll go upstairs and –"

"I know what you're planning," Mello said snappily.

"– go find another game…" Matt finished. "You're not _really_ PMSing, are you?"

"How could _I_… you're an idiot, Matt," he said with a sigh, standing up and ignoring Matt's laughing. "What game was that?"

"What's the point in starting that conversation again?" Matt said. "You'll just start asking what it's about and get confused."

"I don't get video games," he said.

"Then why ask?"

"I dunno."

They walked back upstairs. Matt slowed down by the room before theirs.

"Ooh," he said quietly, stopping and putting his ear to the door. "She wasn't just mad, then.

"What're you talking about?" Mello asked, stopping.

"You've made her cry."

"She… she's only faking, so I'll apologize," Mello said dismissively. "That's what girls do, you know? They pretend to cry to make you feel guilty. Not going to work on me."

"Actually," Matt said, shaking his head, "I think she really is crying. If she wanted you to apologize she'd have left the door open, right?"

"That's really doubtful, leaving the door shut makes it seem more genuine," he said, walking again.

Matt followed him. He had learned a long time ago that arguing with Mello was basically pointless. The only person that held a candle to him in that area was that Christie girl, who was now probably going to avoid ever looking at him again. That was most likely for the better. Their constant bickering would have started getting annoying after a while, especially with Mello getting on his back about giving her "material." He was good at acting like he wasn't concerned at all about it, but he most likely was. It was probable that he was trying to convince himself he didn't give a damn. Just because he looked girly didn't mean he was going to act like it. That was how he always was.

Her crying was even distinguishable through the walls between their two rooms. Mello, who was determined to probe that she was only faking, walked over to the wall between their rooms while Matt was looking through games. Matt looked over.

"What're you doing?" he said.

Mello knocked loudly on the wall. "Would you mind keeping it down over there?" he yelled.

"_Sh-shut up!_" she yelled back in a scratchy voice.

"Wow," he said with a laugh that sounded a little more nervous than amused. "Not even an insult. She's pretty good at acting, too. I suppose she'll be praised even more for that here."

"Yeah," Matt said, choosing not to disagree with Mello. "Probably."

"You don't _really_ think she's…" Mello started. "No, never mind," he said crossing his arms. He sat down on the bed. "She's full of shit, she's just doing this to get to me."

"Z'it working?" Matt asked vaguely, pulling out a box from under the bottom bunk of the bed.

"No," Mello said defensively. "If it were working, then I'd apologize, which I'm not going to do. Because it's not working. And it's not going to any time in the future either either."

"Well, congrats to you," Matt said, sitting down on the floor in front of the box of games, "I'd be over there apologizing my ass off by now if I were in your situation."

"Yeah, well I know what I'm doing here," Mello said. "I know what she's doing and it isn't going to work because of the fact that I _know_."

"Whatever you say."

"If you're implying that I –"

"I'm not implying anything, I'm just looking for a game that I've beaten under ten times," he said, scratching his head. "And by the way," he said, "you're really being a drama queen."

"I am _not_ being a drama queen, you ass – oh shit, I am…" he said. He shook his head and reached down under the bed. He pulled out a chocolate bar, which he unwrapped as he was sitting back up. "That's not good. I swear I think she's brainwashing me."

"Well, if you really look at it, she kind of is," Matt said, examining a game, then putting it in his PSP. "She's manipulating you into acting like this by calling you a bitch."

"Which I'm _not_," Mello said with a mouth full of chocolate. He swallowed. "_She's_ the bitch here!"

"See?" Matt said, turning on his PSP. "That's exactly what's doing it. Bitch."

"I'm not a b – stop making me do that," Mello said. "I'm not a drama queen."

"Nope, you're just a queen in general."

"Shut up," he said. "She might be cute, but you don't have to stick up for her this much. It's not right."

"But is so funny, somehow."

Mello rolled his eyes. He balled up the empty chocolate wrapper and threw it on the floor, trying to tune out the crying in the next room with the noise from Matt's PSP. Unfortunately, it didn't seem to be working very well….


	2. Abnormal Perfection

_**I'm going to be writing story flashbacks in italics to avoid too much confusion. I guess that should work, right? I can't think of another way to do it so it doesn't seem like it's jumping from one setting to the next. I just thought I should clear that up beforehand.**_

_**I don't own the right to any Death Note characters or the guide mentioned below or the website it is on, nor do I use any ideas originally created in the Death Note manga. I don't own nothin' but my characters. I'm merely a huge fan of the manga and I probably would be of the show too if I had any effing way of watching it, but I don't, so I can't, so I'm not. So anyway, you can't sue me :P**_

_**Also kinda important to avoid any confusion:**__** I base my Death Note stories on the information from the manga rather than from the anime. I've never seen the show, actually, but I've read the entire manga once and I'm halfway through it again. I've also read the How To Read Character guide thing for Death Note, so I'm going by the dates of birth in there for the nonoriginal characters (i.e. L (1979) is ten years older than Mello (1989), who is a few months older than Matt (1990), both of whom were born before Near(1991).) And so on for any other characters I use from the manga. All info found at **__**www dot onemanga dot com/DeathNote/110**__** . Just replace the 'dot's with actual '.'s and you'll be good to go.**_

* * *

"_Mum, Dad, I'm home from the park!"_

_Christina Newton walked though the front door of her house. She hadn't taken notice to the fact that it was already partially open. It wasn't very strange. It was the start of summer and it was beautiful outside, after all. It was strange, however, than neither her mother nor father answered her call from the front door. They always said something to regard that she had come home. They had been home when she left, she knew that for a fact, and they would have called her cell phone if they were going to leave. They always found some way to inform her. Well, she was probably just being her overly paranoid self again. It was likely they only hadn't heard her._

"_Mum, Dad, you there? Helloooo? What in the name of God…?"_

_She had stepped in something wet. She looked down at her boot to see a scarlet puddle beneath it. Her heard stopped for a moment at the sight. It looked as if…. Perhaps someone had just spilled something. Yes, that was a good thought. It was probably just… cranberry juice? She and her mother both loved cranberry juice, what else could it have been? It certainly wasn't blood, not in her living room. The trail that led off of that puddle seemed a little suspicious. Was a trick being played on her?_

"_This really isn't funny!" Christina yelled. "If you two don't come out I'm going to get really upset, this is heck of a mean joke!"_

_Christina walked into the kitchen, where the trail of fluid was leading out from. There were footprints mixed into it…. The laundry room was at the back. That meant if she was going to find anything, it would be there. Her heart switched from its shut down mode to a panicked, quickened beating. She didn't want to see what was around the corner by the back door. She really didn't want to. She knew she had to look to find out what was going on, but if it was blood on the floor. As she peeked around the corner, her heart stopped again. She backed into the counter behind her and slid down onto the floor, unable to look for any than a moment._

The next thing Christie could remember was calling the emergency number in a panic, managing to sob out her home address, and trying to answer the police's questions. She hadn't been at home when her parents would have been…. If she _had_ been at home, then she wouldn't be alive. She had taken on the alias Christie Anderson so she could just forget everything. If she didn't have the same name, then she could make up a different past, one where her parents were murdered by a burglar and there was nothing she could have done to stop it. Come to think, at that moment, she wouldn't have minded seeing Mello get beheaded by a random burglar…. Talking about _her_ family like they were scum! They _weren't_ scum, they never were. If she ever stopped crying over it like a little baby, she'd beat him to a pulp, especially after he had the nerve to knock on her wall and tell her to keep it down. She felt like punching through the wall so she could knock on his head and tell him to get a clue.

She never went downstairs for dinner time. She was sure that she was going to get called into Roger's office soon to get scolded for missing so many meals. She wasn't looking forward to that, but she knew it was going to come. When she felt stressed out, eating only made her sick. She was sure Roger would give her some line like, "Every child at this orphanage is stressed out, they've all lost their families." He definitely wouldn't understand. He didn't seem to care much for children, which was completely absurd with a job like his.

It was about eight o' clock that night that she heard a knock on her door. She had stopped crying, and was only sniffling occasionally now. She had also hid herself under her covers to stare at her wall.

"Leave me alone!" she demanded to whoever was knocking. She was fairly sure it would be Mello. "I don't want to talk to you!"

"S'not Mello," said Matt's voice.

"You go away, too, then!" she yelled back. "He's probably standing there with you, you two are always two feet away from each other."

"He's not here, he was being a drama queen so I left 'im downstairs."

"Well then go back down there!" she said. "He's your friend, after all, it's not nice to abandon people."

"Would you just open the door?"

"Oh, bugger…" she said. "Not going to give up, are you?"

She sat up on her bed and stood. She walked over to the door and opened it, crossing her arms as she looked up at Matt.

"What do you want?"

"Just to… apologize on behalf of my friend," he said. "He'll apologize eventually, but he's convinced himself you're only acting."

"Did he get his name from the word melodramatic by any chance?" she asked. "That's certainly what it seems like." She turned and walked back over to her bed and sat down. "I'm not accepting until he says something," she said. "You didn't do anything to begin with, I'm only mad at the bitch downstairs."

Matt laughed, leaning against the doorframe. "That's what's got him acting like a drama queen, being called a bitch."

"Well, if he can't take being called names, he shouldn't start with me. I was only sitting in here when he decided to walk past and start bothering me."

"He snaps easily," Matt said. "I'm positive he didn't mean anything."

She sighed, looking at the floor.

"Matt," she said.

"Yeah?"

"You and Mello are best friends?"

"Yes."

"Then go back downstairs and take his side. He'll only get more mad if he gets suspicious that his best friend is betraying him by talking to the annoying new kid."

"But –"

"I'll be fine," she said. "I've just got to work on forgetting some things for another week or so. It's no big deal. I'm not blaming anyone. I'd still like to beat the 'ell out of your friend, but I'll get over that eventually."

"It… it was really bad, wasn't it?"

Christie smiled without looking back up. "Just don't ask me about it and I won't get any more homicidal than I am right now. Mello's probably about to throw a bitch fit, you should probably go take him some chocolate."

"Right…" he said, starting to walk away from the door slowly.

"Oh, also," she said, looking up, "keep Mello away from here or I'll find some way to kill him. Or embarrass him to the point he wishes he were dead."

He laughed. "Alright, got it. See you 'round."

She waved as he walked out of the door frame and towards the stairs. She waited a moment before getting up to shut her door and lock it again. She sat down against the door, thankful at that time that she didn't have a roommate to worry about. She knew she was destined to get one eventually, but there was hope she would be over all of the "what if" scenarios in her mind of how nothing bad would have happened if she hadn't left her house in the middle of the day. Either no one would have diedf or she would be dead, too. At this point, she wasn't sure which she wanted more. She definitely wished she had never met Mello. Of all the people that had to have a room next to _hers!_ She had started out not having a problem with anyone. It wasn't his fault her parents were dead – no, that was partially her own fault, but he didn't know enough about anything to be talking about it like he did. Matt was nice enough about everything, but he should have been getting in the middle of it. Best just to agree with your friends and avoid problems with it later….

Then again, how true was that? She couldn't know, having never had any friends. She was the weird girl with the perfect family at her school, the one who always got good grades and who loved music and art, the one with two loving parents who supported everything she did, the _freak_ that no one liked. The picture perfect family was the strangest type of family there could possibly. "Perfect" wasn't considered to be "normal." So, she supposed, that meant she was normal now. Her family hadn't been so perfect after all. Her family had been farther from perfect than anyone could have ever imagined.

As the image of the blood came back into her head, she shuddered and back against her bed's headboard. She sat there and drew the covers up to her chin, trying to think of _anything_ but that. There had to be something new she needed to learn on guitar. She hadn't drawn anything for the past week. That was something she could do. Beating up Mello still sounded like a fairly fun idea in her head. Maybe she should do that…. She should definitely do it in front of everyone, then they could tease him about getting beaten up by a girl. That would definitely be funny, and that form of entertainment would last for more than just a few minutes. He'd be teased about that until he got embarrassed with something even worse.

* * *

"You weren't up there talking to _her_, were you?"

"Yeah."

"What for??"

"She's really not just looking for an apology," Matt said, looking up for a moment from his PSP. "Really."

"She's gone and brainwashed you too, has she?" Mello said with a sigh. "That's not good, that means I'll probably end up apol –"

"_Don't_ do that," Matt said laughing. "If you value your life and also possibly your reputation, you won't approach her until she approaches you. It's either death or severe embarrassment if you do."

"Really?" he said. "Huh. What's your penalty?"

"I stopped bothering her when she said to, so I'm safe," he said. "I think whatever happened with her family was _really_ bad. She said she's not blaming anyone for her being upset, but she still wants to beat the crap out of you, which she will get over."

"I wonder if she saw it…" Mello said ponderingly.

"Hmm?"

"What happened to her family. Do you think she did?"

"I dunno," Matt said with a shrug.

"Well it can't be _that bad_ unless she saw something. It's probably not that. If they were murdered or something and she was there, she'd have been killed too."

"Hmm."

"Are you paying attention?"

"Somewhat."

"What did you hear, then?"

"Something along the lines of you wondering if someone saw something." Matt paused his videogame and looked up again. "And you're acting really concerned about it."

"No I'm not," Mello said quickly. "I was only saying…"

"Okay."

Matt went back to his videogame. Still, however, he noticed Mello was looking at the staircase with a look of deep thought on his face. Telling Mello not to do something was about as effective as telling a brick wall to move. It just wouldn't work. It was likely that he was trying to come up with some way to knock on her door without her dislodging the door from its frame and throwing it at him. That would definitely be painful as well as slightly humiliating. It wouldn't be surprising if Mello came to the solution of picking the lock on her door. Saying this out loud, however, would cause him to take it as a suggestion. If Mello was going to do that, he would have to come to that conclusion on his own.

"What if…" Mello said slowly, "I strapped a pillow to my face so she couldn't break my nose?"

"She'd punch you in the stomach. Then you'd fall over, then she'd take the pillow and break your nose anyway."

"Damn… I could go outside and climb through her window."

"First of all, she keeps it closed. Second, she'd push you back out if you managed to."

"Right…" he said with a sigh.

Matt laughed. "I thought you hated her anyway?"

"I _do_, but that's no reason for her to hate me!"

"That doesn't make any sense whatsoever."

"Yes it does," Mello said irritably, standing up from the table. "She's just brainwashed you into thinking it doesn't, see?"

"Of course," Matt said, standing as well and following Mello away.

They headed up the stairs to the rooms. With each stair, Mello attempted formulating another plan. Perhaps he could get Matt to knock on the door? Then they'd both get attacked. Maybe he could get Matt to knock, say that Mello wasn't there, then leave. Well, then that would still present the problem of Mello getting the tar beaten out of him. Maybe he could just stop worrying about getting beat up by a girl and just do everything himself. That seemed like the best solution. Just because she seemed deadly, it didn't mean she was. There was a small bit of hope that he might be able to reason with her.

As they got to her door, he stopped for a moment. Matt didn't realize until he was a few feet ahead. He stopped as well and looked back. He looked from Mello to the door, then laughed.

"Alright," he said, "but I'm not peeling you off of the floor when you've been run over. You're bringing this one on yourself."

Matt went into their room as Mello knocked on the door. She was only a girl, she couldn't hit too hard, if she even _did_ attempt to hit him. There was no verbal answer to the knock, but he heard footsteps within the room. She opened the door, a look of disgust on her face at the sight of him.

"What?" she snapped.

"I - I just wanted to –"

"Go away."

"But –"

She reared her fist back. "I'm warning you!"

"I just wanted to apologize," he said quickly, backing up. "I-I don't know anything about your family and I shouldn't have –"

An apology obviously wasn't going to work. She punched him in the stomach, a lot harder than he had expected. It knocked the wind completely out of him, and he fell back onto the floor, against the wall on the other side of the hallway. She turned on her heel, went back in her room, and slammed the door. He heard the lock click after her. Apparently, she had meant it when she said she wanted to be left alone.

* * *

_**Well, I generally try to make sure my chapters are all over 3,000 words, but this one only came out as just over 2,500, so it's shorter than usual. Sorry about that.**_


	3. Miss Pansy

_Little more of a disclaimer this time:  
Besides the fact that I do not own any Death Note characters or ideas, I also do not own the rights to any of the music mentioned within this chapter, songs and bands alike.  
However, I do own an Ozzy shirt or two. Or seven. Butthat'sbesidesthepoint:)_

* * *

Mello stood back up slowly, his stomach aching horribly. He walked slowly to his and Matt's room and through the opened door, and then fell out on his bed with a groan. Matt, who was lying on the floor and playing something on his PS2, halfway glanced back at him. He couldn't help but smirk at the pitiful sight before going back to his game.

"How'd it go?"

"I don't wanna talk about it…" Mello said irritably, turning his head to look at the wall.

Matt laughed. "Did she hit you?"

"Maybe."

"I thought I heard a thump out in the hallway," he said, still smirking. "Did she knock you over or something?"

"Possibly," Mello said shortly. "And it's _not_ funny."

"I warned you," Matt said, laughing. "That's what makes it funny."

"Shut up!"

"You got punched by a _girl_."

"Whatever…"

"_And_ it knocked you down."

Mello mumbled something about 'stupid ass' under his breath. Matt laughed again.

"Things like this wouldn't happen if you didn't try to act like a big shot all the time," Matt said. "Technically, this was the world's way of kicking your ass."

"Shut _up_…"

Matt sniggered. Grumbling again, Mello picked up a videogame case from next to his bed. He examined it for a moment. The plastic was definitely hard enough to knock some sense into Matt. He tossed it in Matt's general direction and missed. It hit the television instead.

"Oy, watch it!" Matt yelled in surprise. "Fuck!"

Mello looked over, just in time to see the words "You Lose" come up on the screen in large bubble letters.

"Hah!"

He laughed as Matt reached over to his game console to reset it. He looked at Mello over his shoulder.

"At least I didn't get hit by a girl."

Mello grumbled again.

"Or knocked over by one."

"Oh, shut up!"

Mello crossed his arms and glared at the wall again. Matt looked down at his PS2 and spotted something next to it. He picked it up and examined the unopened bar of chocolate that had been lying on the floor. He sat up, still looking at it

"Here," he said, then threw it at Mello. It landed on his stomach, causing him to wince in pain. "Seems like you need that at the moment."

Mello picked up the bar of chocolate and looked at it. He gave an annoyed grunt and dropped it on the floor dismissively. He turned to face the wall completely. Matt gaped at Mello, then at the chocolate.

"Are you alright…?" he asked.

"I'm _fine_," Mello said through gritted teeth.

"I don't think so," Matt said slowly. "I've never seen you turn down chocolate before. This is almost a little scary."

"Yeah," Mello snapped, "well you've been brainwashed by what's-her-name's good looks into never sticking up for me again. So no, I'm _not_ alright."

"Aww," Matt said sarcastically. "You _know_ that _your_ good looks are the only ones that could ever brainwash me, Mello. Now c'mere and gimme a hug."

Mello gave a snort of laughter.

"Fuckin' pervert…"

He reached back and picked up the chocolate bar he had dropped on the floor. He sat up, opening it, but immediately doubled over and groaned in pain.

"I think there might be internal bleeding…" he said. "_Dammit_…" He sat back up, taking a bite of chocolate. "I'm going to have to find some way to get back at her," he continued. "Can't hit her back or anything, seeing as she's a girl – think about what Roger would have to say about _that_. I'll have to be more discreet and make sure it can't lead back to me."

"Well," Matt said, "just make sure it doesn't coincide with any of L's visits here, then. He can lead anything back to the right person."

"Yeah," Mello said. "But anyway, like I was saying, revenge. I think –"

"Well," Matt said, turning back to the television and picking up his PS2 controller, "you're obviously Mello again."

Mello regretted asking such a question the second it got out of his mouth: "Who was I before?" He flinched at the sound of the question. He took another bite of chocolate and bent down to pick up another videogame case in preparation.

"Miss Pansy from Faggotville," Matt said nonchalantly. "_Ouch!_" he added as the corner of the videogame case collided with the back of his head.

"Hah!" Mello said. He took another bite of chocolate. "That'll teach you."

"Uh-huh. Whatever, Mary."

From the next room, Christie listened in slight amusement as the boys got into a videogame case fight. This had seemed to be a common occurrence in the past week, and they always generally ended after three minutes, with Mello yelling, "_OUCH! Hair! _Truce, _please!_" Of course, it basically ended the same way this time. There was a little more of a verbal exchange following than was usual, however.

"Wow," Matt said. "Knocked over by a girl, can't stand having your hair pulled, you seem to be craving chocolate more than usual… you're being awfully touchy lately, Mary. Are you pregnant?"

"_Shuttup!_" Mello yelled in response to this.

Matt gasped. "Lord, you are, aren't you?" he said. "Oh, _shit_, _**why**_?? I'm too young to raise a child! I thought you said you were on the pill!"

"Just play your videogame."

"This is more important than videogames, Mary!"

"I'm not Mary."

"You're not?" Matt said, sounding absolutely dumbfounded. "What're you saying?"

"I'm _saying_ I'm not a girl," Mello said irately.

"So you've been lying to me all these years? Is that what you're saying?"

"I never said… what?"

"Well, with that hair, you never know, do you?" Matt said thoughtfully.

"Just play your damn videogame! I was talking about revenge a minute ago, what the hell are you going on about?"

There was a momentary silence. "Hormonal much…?" Matt said. This was followed by a small _thud_ and another "_Ouch!" _that indicated that Mello had broken his own truce.

Christie bit down on the corner of one of the pillows on her bed to keep from laughing at the production in the next room. She had never liked soap operas or ham acting before, but listening to Mello's complete blondness mixed in with Matt's random perversions was priceless. Having them next to her room wasn't half bad. She got to hear a comedy go on every night.

The worst part of the situation was that she probably could have been good friends with them if it weren't for Mello's obsession over being number one. His possessiveness of Matt seemed a little strange, too. Maybe that was only because she herself had never had a best friend to be possessive over. If it weren't for that possessiveness, she knew her and Matt would have gotten along. If it weren't for Mello's inferiority complex, she could have even been friends with _him_. They were both cute. Granted, Mello was a little on the feminine side, but his high maintenance was part of his character.

She _almost_ felt bad for punching him in the stomach, but not quite. After all, he was planning retaliation on her, which meant she should probably plan retaliation on him for whatever he was doing. If that kept going, then the cycle would never stop and they'd both end up getting humiliated on a daily basis. Unfortunately, she had a feeling that the both of them would be too proud to ever call a truce. With a sigh at this thought, she lie back on her bed and shut her eyes. It was early, but it had been a long day. She'd gotten through telling herself a new story about what really happened to her family, and she had punched someone. All in all, it had been interesting, if not anything else.

* * *

Christie awoke early the next morning, before breakfast had even started. She sat up in her bed, contemplating for a moment. A thought came to her mind. On one side of her room was a bathroom. On the other side were Mello and Matt. She glanced at her guitar amplifier. She could begin her retaliation early…. She grinned at this thought as she stood up, stretched, and walked to her dresser. She pulled out a black t-shirt with an Ozzy logo on the front and one of her regular pairs of ripped jeans. She got dressed, leaving her pajamas on the floor carelessly as she picked up one of her amplifier chords. She picked up her amplifier and set it on the bed with the speaker against the wall. She plugged the chord into her favorite guitar and into her amplifier. She sat on her bed with her back against the back of the amplifier. She reached behind her and turned it on. She held her fingers carefully over the strings on her guitar to prevent any static from getting through as she thought of the best possible song for the two idiots in the room next to hers to wake up to. It had to be something loud, something with a simple riff that would get stuck in their heads for the rest of the day, and something that they probably wouldn't recognize.

With a sigh of contemplation, she decided to do a random improvised solo to clear her thoughts. Soon, she was playing the main riff of "Iron Man" by Black Sabbath, then "Godzilla" by Blue Oyster Cult stemmed from that. She immediately heard a yell of anguish from the next room. Something hit the wall, then Mello's voice yelled.

"It's six o' clock in the fuckin' morning! _Stop it!_"

She stopped and moved to the wall.

"I'm working on _my_ revenge for whatever you're planning," she yelled.

"And that's the best you came up with!" he yelled back.

"No, this just helps me think!"

She continued playing, resulting in a groan of annoyance from the next room. In the next room, Mello covered his head with a pillow, but the amplifier was just too loud. It wasn't fair. Apparently, she had heard him discussing with Matt what he should do for revenge. This was only a preliminary stage for her. He wondered what she was planning for stage two. This was bad enough. Although, whatever song she was playing was kind of catchy… he had recognized the first one, almost anyone would have, but he didn't know this one. She stopped playing suddenly. He then heard her yell.

"Have a plan now!" she yelled.

"Good…" he grumbled, taking the pillow off his ears. "Now I can go back to – _GAH!_ Stop it! You said you had a plan!" he yelled in annoyance, putting the pillow back over his head. "How the hell is Matt still sleeping through that?" he wondered aloud. "Son of a bitch would still be asleep if a bulldozer crashed through the room… it's not fair… I'll have to think of something good."

After about an hour, the music stopped. It was around seven o' clock, which meant breakfast. Mello yawned, sitting up on the side of his bed. Despite having an hour of thinking time, he hadn't thought of any good revenge yet. He heard Matt yawn in response up on the top bunk. He climbed down and walked over to the closet.

"Had a really strange dream," he said drowsily, taking a striped shirt out of the closet.

"Really?" Mello said irritably.

"Yeah," he said with a laugh. "There was a Black Sabbath concert in some huge stadium and Godzilla stepped on it. I don't know what the hell that was all about. Really weird."

"Yeah," Mello said. "Me either. Might've had to do something with the fact I just got blasted awake an hour ago."

"Eh?"

"Stupid… fucking…" He pointed at the wall to indicate what he was talking about, "decided to use her fucking amplifier as an alarm clock at six in the morning."

"What was she playing?"

"I don't know," he said. "I recognized one song."

"The song at the concert was 'Iron Man' right before Godzilla stepped on it and wrecked the whole thing."

"That may have been it."

"But where did Godzilla come from…?"

"I don't fuckin' know, one of your video games?"

Christie, listening on the other side of the wall, was trying hard not to burst out into a fit of laughter. She stood up from her bed and unlocked her door, then opened it. She also walked to her dresser and opened what she had dubbed to be her 'revenge drawer.' She had started working on filling it with random items when Mello first started bothering her, just in case. She picked up a week old, half empty container of eggs. They were sure to be nice and rotten by now. What could be more fun than a morning egging? It would be fun for her, anyway. Maybe not so much for Mello, but that was what made it so much fun.

She opened the container and sat back on her bed, listening to the next room again. She heard Mello whistling the tune to "Iron Man," then he muttered 'dammit' under his breath before continuing whistling. She allowed herself a small laugh. He was definitely in the closet looking for clothes at that moment. That meant him and Matt would head downstairs to breakfast in a short moment. Mello would be sure to slow down by her door when he saw it was open, and that was when she'd make her move.

"That's 'Iron Man,'" Matt said, hearing Mello whistling. "What'd the other one sound like?" He whistled something else. "_That_ explains Godzilla!"

"What?"

"That's the name of that song."

"How'd you know that?"

"It's in _Guitar Hero_."

"Ah. That explains it, then."

Christie laughed a little, waiting to hear their door open. She could already hear others headed down to breakfast. She knew Matt and Mello wouldn't be far behind. She heard the sound of some videogame in the next room, and she was sure this was Matt's PSP being turned on. She then heard the door open. She took an egg out of the carton. She tossed it in the air and caught it. She repeated this, waiting to see them walk by her door. She saw them, and they walked right past. Mello then backed up and looked in.

"Your door's open," he said.

"Thank you captain obvious," she said sarcastically, still tossing the egg up and down.

"Yeah, well – what's the egg for?" he asked slowly.

"You mean this egg?" she said, catching it and looking at it. "I'm not sure. Probably something along the lines of this."

She tossed it at him. In his attempt to block his face by bending his head down, it hit his hair. Matt, who had apparently just noticed Mello wasn't in front of or behind him, walked back with his PSP. He looked at Mello, saw the egg in his hair and the glare he was shooting into Christie's room, and laughed.

"_It's not funny!_" Mello yelled.

"Sure it's not, egg-head."

"Hey," Christie said thoughtfully, "now his head matches his personality."

Mello made a noise of frustration and walked off in the other direction, grumbling about 'having to take a fuckin' shower'. Matt laughed as he walked to the boy's bathroom at the other end of the hall and slammed the door once he was inside. Christie laughed, closing the container of eggs.

"That's already brightened my day," she said, sitting back against the wall. "Those were rotten as hell, too, I stole them from the kitchens the first day I was here. It was a 'just in case' sort of thing."

"Better mood?" Matt said.

"Ah, yeah," she said. "Still not coming down for breakfast, I don't do breakfast. Maybe lunch. Bugging Mello is even more entertaining than I thought it would be."

"Most people who bug him get the crap beat out of them," he said with a laugh.

"Well, it seems he's afraid of what Roger will do if he hits a girl, so I'm not at much of a risk there," Christie said. "Now I just need to think of what I should do next. You should probably leave before Mello sees you're here or he'll think you're helping me plan, you know."

"Yeah," he said. "See you."

"Right," she said in regard, waving. "And leave the door open. It'll intimidate the hell out of Mary when she gets back from washing the egg out of her hair."

She walked back over to her dressed as Matt walked out of the door frame. She put the eggs back in her prank supplies drawer. Christie then heard footsteps mingled with mumbled swear words coming from up the hallway. She grinned as she walked over by her bed. She laid flat on her stomach with her top half dangling over the edge, looking under the bed for a pair of her boots – she kept all of her shoes under the bed. Mello stopped by her door, looking in with his arms crossed. She looked up and laughed at his half dry hair.

"Hope you didn't get too wet," she said airily, looking back under her bed.

She heard him sigh. She looked over, confused at this. He didn't look overly furious, just perplexed.

"I'm at lack of ideas for pranks," he said, shaking his head. "Can we just call up a truce?"

"Once I've figured out something for stage three," she said, looking under her bed.

"I'm being serious," he said. "I don't know what to do. I can't think of _anything_."

"I'm being serious, too," she said. "I'll call it even if I get in one last bit of vengeance."

"_Fine_," he said irritably. "Whatever."

"There'll still be occasional jokes," she said, finding a pair of boots she liked and pulling them out from under her bed. "There's no avoiding that. But we can call a truce as far as starting an all out war goes."

"Good," he said. "I'm going to breakfast."

"Bye," she said as he walked out of sight.

Wondering what her next order of business should be, Christie pulled on her black leather cowboy boots and lay back on her bed. She tucked her hands behind her head and stared at the ceiling, feeling an easily recognizable feeling coming over her: boredom.

* * *


	4. Crazy Homicidal Mello

_Disclaimer: I own no Death Note characters, only my original characters in my stories._

_I haven't updated this in forever, but I got inspired again._

_So, here goes._

* * *

Christie did indeed decide to head downstairs for lunch that day. She dealt with Mello's taunting over her random cowboy boots for a bit. It wasn't that bad, really. He had no idea what she had in store for _him_. She had the perfect idea. It was so perfect that it even amazed her. It was an ingredient she had been planning on using in some brownies if she found anyone she particularly disliked, but Mello's completely ditzy nature meant that brownies didn't even have to be involved. Mello might have made better scores on tests, but his common sense was zero when it came to chocolate. He wouldn't even look at the wrapper before eating it.

"Well," Christie interrupted his ranting about her boots after about five minutes, "I was going to make a peace offering, but after all that, I'm not sure."

Mello looked at her uncertainly. "'Peace offering'? What kind of… 'peace offering?'"

"What's with the air quotes?"

"What peace offering?" he repeated.

She held up three bars of chocolate. His eyes widened.

"Chocolate…?"

"Obviously, dipshit."

"Language!" she heard an old voice behind her.

"Sorry, Roger," she said in her _sweet-innocent_ voice. "I won't say it again, I promise." She continued quietly. "I'm not even going to try to get back at you."

Mello, who was already hypnotized by the chocolate bars, nodded dumbly.

"So you'll stop picking on me if I give you the chocolate?"

Mello was so hypnotized that he didn't even hear the sniggering from his goggled friend next to him. He nodded dumbly again.

"Okay," she said, holding out the bars. She almost had her hand forcefully removed as he snatched them away, tore one open, and took a bite. He looked at it curiously. "It tastes… different."

"I didn't know what brand to get, I haven't been here for that long."

He shrugged, and continued eating the chocolate. She had to suppress an evil grin as he finished the first chocolate bar. She managed to, but she hoped Mello wouldn't look at Matt. In his attempt to suppress his laughter, he had apparently decided to hold his breath, and his face was almost as red – if not _as_ red as – his hair as he attempted to focus on whatever game was in his PSP.

About seven minutes later, Mello had to excuse himself from the table, holding his stomach with a look of pain and discomfort on his face that was also etched quite clearly into his voice. Matt moved over to Mello's seat across from Christie.

"Laxatives?"

"Hell yeah," she said, laughing. "I'm probably going to go lock myself in my room in a minute. I wouldn't put it past him to hit me for something as serious as tainted chocolate."

"Where in the world did you get it?"

"I've been swiping random things since I got here," she said, "mostly just in case someone like Mello started bothering me. This should be the last thing I do for a while, unless he decides to wage war now. If that happens, it won't end until one of us gets transferred somewhere else. He called up a truce this morning, but I wouldn't put it past him to break it."

"You just did."

"No," she said. "My conditions were that the third phase of my three-phase revenge for… the thing he said, had to be completed. Phase one was planning, which was when I played guitar loud enough to keep him awake. I can't plan without music. Phase two was amusement, which was tossing rotten eggs at him. Phase three was embarrassment, which came in the chocolaty form of laxatives this time. I didn't tell him what I was going to do, but I told him it would happen."

It was about five minutes later that everyone in the orphanage heard a furious yell from the top of the stairs.

"_I'M GOING TO __**KILL**__ THAT BITCH!!_"

This yell apparently indicated that Mello had switched from his default "Bitchy-Mello" setting to his "Crazy-Homicidal-Mello" setting. As Matt told Christie, this setting was only activated when Mello either hadn't had chocolate for more than forty-eight hours, or when someone or something pissed him off severely. The last time it had happened, it was around because Near had scored higher than him on the fiftieth test in a row. Near didn't leave his room for two weeks after that.

"Wow," Christie said, now a little nervous as she heard hard footsteps coming down the stairs at a running pace. She stood up. "Better be prepared."

"You don't want to attempt to fight him when he's like this," Matt warned.

"I'm aware," she said, "but I bet I'm faster than him in my scared-for-my-life setting."

Mello got to the bottom of the stairs and whipped his head around in every direction until he spotted her. He pointed.

"_You_," he said in a murderous tone.

He started to walk towards her. When he was almost close enough to take a swing, she took off quickly past him, pushing him as she ran past. She ran three steps at a time as she ran up the stairs and made it to her room with enough time to lock her door before Mello got there. She sat down on her bed just as something collided with her door with a very forceful _thump!_ She then heard the yelling again, the yelling of a very demonic blond girly-boy. It was indeed quite a scary thing to hear in the middle of the day, or any time of day, for that matter.

"Bitch gave me fucking _laxatives!_ Peace offering my _ass!_ Stupid fucking – _ARGH!!_" There was another pound on the door. She was sure she heard the wood splintering.

"Mello!" she heard the voice of a decrepit old man say in a furious tone.

Mello was so angry that she could almost _hear_ him seething. That was just strange.

"_What?_" he shot at Roger.

"Don't you take that tone with me!" _Whack!_ "What in the world do you think you're doing??"

"She– tainted chocolate– _I'm going to __**kill**__ her!!_"

"Mello, go down to my office."

"But she–"

"'She' will be there in a moment as well."

"Good! She _better_ get a good punishment!"

Christie heard Mello stomp away from the door. It wasn't until then that she heard the sounds of excited whispering from probably around the staircase. Of course everyone else would have taken interest in Mello's sudden outburst, as well as her narrow escape. That was probably the closest thing to murder that had ever happened at the orphanage. Christie now heard a sharp rapping at her door, as though a cane was hitting it.

"Christie!" Roger yelled, sounding quite perturbed by the sudden disturbance of peace. "You are to come to my office at once!"

"Will Mello be shackled to a chair when I get there?" she called back, sarcastic fear in her voice.

"Don't get smart with me! Get _out_ here!"

Christy stood up and walked cautiously over to her door. She opened it, only to be faced with an old, wrinkled, short, and very angry looking man: Roger, one of the people who looked after the orphanage. She had heard that he wasn't the owner, but he took charge in the absence of the owner. He didn't particularly scare her. His cane, however, did, especially when it hit her sharply in both knees.

"Office, _now_," he said angrily.

She clicked her heals together and put her hand to her forehead in an army-like salute.

"Sir, yes, sir!" she yelled. Another sharp whack across her knees ensued.

"GO!"

She hurried around him and through the crowd that had gathered around the stairs. She elbowed Matt sharply in the side on her way down to stop his sniggering, but it didn't work. She decided to keep going anyway, not wanting to get any more bruises on her knees. She stopped at the door to Roger's office and waited for the old man.

"I'm not going in first," she said, crossing her arms. "I'm a scardy-cat, I admit it, but I like my face in the condition it is in, thanks."

Roger opened the door. Mello, who had been standing and facing the desk, turned his head sharply. He seemed to look straight through Roger, his eyes wide and wild with anger.

"YOU!" he yelled, pointing at her.

"Mello," Roger said warningly, "be calm."

Grumbling, Mello turned his head back around. Christie walked cautiously into the office after Roger and stood a good ways away from Mello in front of Roger's desk as he sat down. Mello gave her a glare that would have made anyone else run to the hills and never come back. She, however, was frozen to the spot with fear now. She really didn't want to die, and she was afraid she would be killed the moment she moved.

"Now," Roger said, "_one at a time_ – what is going on?"

"She– she– she–" Mello stammered, pointing at Christie.

"I gave him chocolate bars that were actually laxatives, but he was too thick to look at the labels."

"OI!" he yelled. She cowered where she stood.

"Mello," Roger said, "calm. Why?" he asked Christie.

"Because she's a _bitch!_" Mello yelled.

"It was stage three of my revenge, which I warned him about earlier this morning," Christie said, trying to keep her voice calm. Unfortunately, like most dogs, it seemed that Mello could smell fear.

"Revenge?"

"I said something that pissed her off and she felt the need to taint chocolate to get back at me!" Mello said, seething. "Before that, she woke me up at six o' clock in the morning – _six o' clock!_ – with her damned guitar playing –"

"Language, Mell–"

"NO!" he yelled. "Then, when I was going past her room and I was _going _to be nice, she threw rotten eggs at me and they got in my _hair_ and I had to take a shower, and _then_ we called a truce. She said she was going to finish her revenge, I didn't think she'd go as far as to _taint chocolate!_"

"_I_ didn't do the tainting, the laxatives company did." He glared at her.

"What is it he said that made you resort to doing something so childish?" Roger asked.

"He…" she looked at Mello, who now also looked scared. If she said what he'd said, seeing as Roger knew what happened to her parents, Mello would be in severe trouble. She looked at her feet. "It was nothing, really," she said. "It wasn't anything overly bad. He just called me a bitch. I don't like being called a bitch."

"Language."

"Sorry," she said quickly.

"You aren't lying, are you?"

"No," she said, just as quickly, looking up with wide eyes. "Why would I lie? I'm getting into trouble no matter what it was that he said. But he _did_ say that, I'm not lying."

This surprised Mello entirely. Anyone normal would have told the truth to get him off of their back, but she had lied for him…? That just didn't make any sense. Maybe she thought she would get it worse if she had told the truth. Which she would have, no denying that. He would have been on clean-up duty of everything for weeks if she had told the truth, considering it had to had been something really bad that happened for her to end up there, if it got to her as much as it seemed to. Maybe she had just lied because she didn't want him to get into any worse trouble than her. Of course, considering what he knew about her now, this seemed unlikely. Then again, she hadn't really taken any sort of action against him when she first got there, even though he _had_.

"Mello," Roger said, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Is this what happened?"

"Yes."

"Fine," he said. "You will both be washing all of the dishes for the next two weeks for all meals, including all cooking utensils. And stop with the moaning and groaning about it before you even start, or it'll be three weeks."

They both left in a hurry before Roger could hit them with his cane again. Mello stopped outside the door, but Christie kept walking, still afraid her life was close to being over.

"H… hey!" Mello said, confused. He ran after her and managed to catch up with her before she could shut the door to her room.

"What?" she said when he put his foot in the door to stop her from closing it.

"What was _that_ about?" Mello asked. "That wasn't what I said that pissed you off, it was… the other thing."

Christie gave him an _are-you-really-that-stupid_ sort of look, and then opened the door the rest of the way. She crossed her arms.

"Roger knows what happened to my parents," she said slowly, trying to keep some emotion out of her voice. As he couldn't tell what emotion that was, she was doing a good job of it. "Because he knows, he knows that I would have been at least _somewhat_ justified for my reaction, and I wouldn't have gotten quite as bad of a punishment, and yours would have been much worse than it was."

Mello tilted his head a little, taking in what she had said. It didn't make any sense. The only way anyone at The Wammy's House knew anything about anyone else's past was if they themselves told anyone. The only person who knew about why Mello was there was Matt, because they had been roommates since Matt had gotten there. If Mello didn't know anything, he couldn't have gotten into any more trouble. That would have been unfair.

"But if I didn't know anything about it, then how could I have gotten worse?"

She bit her bottom lip. "You knowing how would involve me telling you. Which…" She spoke slowly, still having trouble fighting an emotion that sounded something like devastation, but gave off a feeling of anger. "I'm not going to do. I'll just tell you that you wouldn't understand unless you knew."

"But –"

Her door was already shut, and he heard the lock click a moment later. As he walked into his room, he heard muffled sounds of a guitar amplifier turned down low through the wall. Matt was lying on the floor in his usual spot, playing some random game on one of his many game systems. Mello was starting to loose track of them, and he wasn't going to bother asking. He flopped down on his bed. He felt a strange, unfamiliar feeling in his stomach as he lay down on his back. Guilt? No, it had to be that "chocolate." If it wasn't done yet, he was in for it….

"You look off," Matt said. It was amazing he could say such a thing without even looking up from the television screen. "Trouble?"

"We were both sentenced to washing dishes for the next two weeks. Every meal."

"Cooking utensils or no?"

"Yeah."

"Damn, that's rough," Matt said, shaking his head. "Does Roger know what started the whole thing?"

"No," Mello said. "That's the strange thing. She lied about it."

"Wha'?" He paused his videogame at that, a bit more interested than before. He sat up on the rug in the middle of the floor that he'd been lying on and turned to face Mello. "What'd she say?"

"She said she had just gotten angry because I called her a bitch. I just asked her, and she said something about how if she had told the truth, I would have gotten it _really_ bad, and that elaborating would have involved her telling me why she was here, which she wasn't going to do."

"Huh," Matt said. "What d'you think?"

"What?"

"What d'you think happened?"

"I dunno," he said, looking over at a bare patch of wall next to his bed uninterestedly. "Seems bad."

"You can't possibly not be interested at least a _little_."

Mello looked over. "You can go ask her if you want to. I'm not going to have anything to do with it. She might go psycho on me and punch me again."

Mello regretted opening his mouth the second he did. He his head and looked at the wall again, still feeling that strange feeling in his stomach as he listened to Matt's taunting about how he'd been hit by a girl and it actually hurt him. Granted, but she had punched _hard_, and he hadn't been expecting it, even though he should have been expecting it. It was just too strange that she was suddenly being nice now. He still wasn't sure if he should be kind to _her_. Messing with chocolate was just out of the question. Everyone at Wammy's House knew that, and she was going to have to find it out eventually, too.

But then… he was… it had to be guilt he was feeling. It didn't burn as badly as the _after effects_ of the "chocolate" he'd eaten had, it was just a nauseating weightless feeling in the very core of his being. He shouldn't have felt bad, since that was probably what she was trying to make him feel. _Guilty_. It sucked that she was so good at it. But then, she was a girl. Most girls did seem to have a natural born talent at making guys feel bad. She was just _really_ good at it because of what had happened to have her put there. It was obvious that it wasn't just that her parents had gotten tired of her smart-alecky ways and put her their so they wouldn't have to deal with it anymore. It was something worse than that, something a lot bigger. She didn't seem to be very willing to talk about it. Then, Mello never talked about why _he_ was there to anyone but Matt. Christie didn't really have any friends there yet, which meant that she didn't have anyone to talk to about it, but she didn't seem to want anyone to talk to about it either. So, he shouldn't worry about it. It would just make him feel guiltier. So far, guilt _definitely_ wasn't a feeling he liked.

* * *

_I know I haven't updated this in forever. For those who do actually read it, I should be updating it more often while I'm taking a break from working on **Sketch**. I might end up also working on it and just working on four stories at the same time. Meh. Who knows? Reviews are greatly appreciated :)_


	5. Socks?

_Disclaimer: I don't own Death Note or any of its characters or places. I just like writing._

* * *

Midnight crept upon The Wammy's House quickly, and the sounds of an argument about a videogame in the room next to Christie's could be heard, muffled by the wall, although she wasn't particularly paying it any attention. She had more important things to do. After trying and failing to reasonably assess the situation for the hundredth time since it had happened, Christie folded up a crumpled sheet of paper and put it back underneath everything in the pranks drawer of her dresser. She remained sitting on the floor with her legs crisscrossed. She had practically memorized the note at this point, but it still didn't make any sense to her. It _was_ in her father's handwriting, but she couldn't bring herself to believe it had been him who had written it. He had always been too _normal_ for his own good…. The letter, though, didn't make him seem normal at all. That was too strange.

Also bothering her was Mello, but not directly. He was in the next room and not pounding on the wall telling her to be quiet for once, which was quite nice. Even so, she just couldn't understand why in the world she had been nice to that ass. He had done nothing but attempt to make her life hell since the moment she had arrived at the orphanage, and now she was being _nice_ to him? She didn't understand herself sometimes. She didn't like Mello at all, not even as a _friend_, and now she was also dead scared of him since she knew he had a "Crazy-Homicidal" setting, as Matt had called it.

With a sigh as she forfeited these thoughts for a more comforting one of sleep, Christie pushed her dresser drawer back in, confident that she'd figure it all out. For now, though, sleep was the best thing to do. It was after midnight now, after all, and all that thinking about it too much was going to give her was a severe headache. She walked over to her bed, glancing back at that dresser drawer as she did so, and she lay down on the bed, now listening to Matt and Mello arguing about…. What were they arguing about this time? She could have sworn she heard the word "eggs," for some strange reason, but they were being too quiet about it. She decided not to worry about it.

As she woke up the next morning with a headache that was threatening to split her skull in two, Christie realized sleep hadn't been the best option. It seemed that the theme of most of her dreams had been blood and axes, which really wasn't pleasant. That probably meant another few nights of her being an insomniac and staying up on a caffeine, chocolate, and guitar-high. She wouldn't dare steal any chocolate from Mello, however. She had no death wish. She would have to find somewhere else.

As she looked at the clock on her wall, she realized it was only 6:30 in the morning. No worries. She would get up and grab a cup of coffee before Roger was awake so he couldn't scold her about stunting her growth. Regardless of how many people she explained to that she didn't think she was going to get any taller than what she already was anyway, they all still felt the need to tell her that too much caffeine was "bad for someone her age." That was simply ridiculous, in her opinion.

The one thing she didn't think about doing was shutting her door on the way out.

Mello had stayed awake all night by eating half of his chocolate stash. The second he heard footsteps in the next room, he poked Matt until he woke up and commenced babbling about putting the plan into play. Matt stared at him drowsily before reaching next to him and getting his goggles. He put them on. Having passed out in his clothes after arguing with Mello about his "plan" until three o' clock in the morning, he didn't much feel like changing into anything else. He managed to make it down to the floor without falling off of the top bunk and severing his spinal cord on a videogame controller.

"Alright," Mello said. "If her door's locked, you're really good at picking locks, so that's your job, and I already have a box to put everything in as soon as we find it so we have to hurry and move because I think she probably just went downstairs to get coffee or something."

He took a deep breath after that sentence, and his eye twitched. Matt glanced over at the box on Mello's bed and noticed that half of Mello's chocolate stash was gone. That wasn't a good sign. In fact, that was a very, _very_ bad sign.

"Mello?"

"What??"

"Are you sure about this?"

"_Yes I'm fucking sure!"_ he half-yelled.

"Alrigh', then," Matt said, deciding not to disagree. He grabbed an empty box from next to the door. "Let's get going."

Mello was out the door faster than a bullet on steroids, even though that wasn't even possible. Of course, Mello on a sugar high that early in the morning was also impossible, so it was the perfect simile for such a situation. Matt walked out the door to see that Christie had left her door open. Mello had already found her stash of pranks.

"Getoverhere!" he whispered frantically, his words running together.

Matt walked over.

"When's the last time you blinked?" he asked as Mello began loading random things into the box.

"Five and a half seconds ago."

"You're starting to scare me."

"Yeah. Okay."

It took him a matter of seconds to empty the contents of that drawer out. He looked at Matt.

"Socks," he said suddenly. "We need socks."

"Wha–"

"Go get enough socks to fill this drawer. It'll be funny. Trust me."

"O-_kay_," Matt agreed, backing away with the box.

Once back in their room, Matt dumped the contents of that box into another that had been prepared for this situation, apparently while he had been asleep and Mello had been rambling around the room. He got what he was fairly sure was enough socks to fill the drawer, loaded them into the empty box, and took it back to Christie's room. Mello was standing at the door. He quickly grabbed the box and rushed back over to the dresser and commenced whatever he was planning. It was almost like watching real life on fast forward – it seemed to barely take him five seconds. He shut the drawer and handed the box back to Matt, then exited the room. Matt followed him back into the room. Mello picked up the other box and looked inside, shaking the contents around.

"_Damn_," he said, looking inside in relish. "I don't know how, but she has _fireworks_ in here, those'd be great to set off in Roger's office, y'know?"

Matt shut the door behind him as Mello dumped the contents of the box onto the floor and rifled around.

"There's those damned eggs…" he said, looking at the container as Matt sat down as well. "And… paper?"

Mello picked up a folder, crumpled-looking sheet of paper from the pile. It was folded into eighths. It didn't seem remotely harmful, not like the random assortment of explosives. What could it have been? He started unfolding it, but was interrupted.

"I don't think that's such a good idea…" Matt said slowly. Mello looked up at Matt.

"The worst it'll give me is a paper cut," he said.

"I mean, it might be private or something, you really think she'd want you reading it?"

"It can't be that bad."

Mello commenced with unfolding the paper. Before he read it, the first thing he noticed was fingerprints, all over the paper. They were a kind of a dark reddish color, but kind of murky looking. What was up with _that_? The paper was starting to yellow a little, but it didn't look overly old. It was written to… Christina Newton? That had to be her real name.

Matt noticed that Mello's eye twitched slightly as he examined just the paper itself. He started refolding it.

"_Maybe_ you're right…" He refolded the paper and set it down. "What?"

There _had_ to be _something_ interesting on that paper if Mello had just said something like that. Mello never admitted that anyone else was right. He could even argue L half to death, and that was saying something, considering who L was. Mello would go to any lengths to prove someone else wrong about _anything_, but he had just very cautiously admitted that Matt was right about reading the paper.

"What was it?"

"It had her real name on it," he said. "It's – _oi_! You told _me_ not to look at it, what're you doing??"

Matt unfolded the paper and looked at it. "Eugh…" he said in disgust. "Blood? That's sick…. What the _hell_?"

"It's a note, I gathered that much, but _I'm_ not going to read it," Mello said. "I'd rather not read _any_ note that has bloody fingerprints spattered all over it. And _you_ shouldn't either!" Mello grabbed the paper from Matt and refolded it. Then a look of realization dawned in his eyes. "We're dead."

"What?"

"We're _dead_," he said. "We thought that was just a pranks drawer, but it _obviously_ had more important things in it than just explosives and rotten eggs, like this notebook here!" He picked up a three subject notebook. "Notes on guitar things… random drawings… and journal! Not good. We shouldn't have this, we have to put it back before she – oh, shit…"

They both heard the sounds of footsteps in her room. They door shut, and a lock clicked.

"_Lock the door!_" Mello hissed at Matt.

Matt, who obviously didn't feel like having his head knocked off of his shoulders that morning, stood up and walked quickly over to the door and locked it. In the next room, they heard a drawer open, followed by the sounds of a terrible, deadly silence. Then there were footsteps. More horrible, horrible footsteps. The bed creaked in the next room, and there was a knock at their wall.

"Y… yes?" Matt said.

"Do you two know if someone was in my room?" Her voice was calm in that venomous sort of way.

"Not a clue," Matt said. "Mello's still asleep as I gather it, and I just woke up."

"Did you hear anyone go in?"

The venom disappeared and was replaced with an almost frantic worry.

"Yeah, few minutes ago," he said. "I didn't know who it was, I figured it was you."

"Good acting," Mello whispered.

"Fine…" she said after a moment. "But whoever did come in here is going to be hung from a window by their own intestines if they don't fess up within the next twenty-four hours. If you've got any idea who it might be, then warn them."

"Okay."

They heard her leave her room again. Mello let out the breath he had been holding.

"Told you," he said. "And also trying to get the picture of being hung by my own entrails out of my head…"

"I'm going to be killed too."

"I was the mastermind!" he said frantically, waving his arms. "I'm more dead than you'll ever be! Besides, she _hates_ me, she doesn't mind you so much, so you'll get off easy if I say you were just lying to attempt to save me!"

"Hey…" Matt said slowly, "isn't L visiting today?"

"What??"

Mello's head turned like a whip to look at the calendar on the wall. The day that was that day was marked with a red and circled "L."

"_Yes!_" Mello said, jumping up. "We can get L to save us, right??"

"That would involve explaining everything…"

"I'd rather be killed by an insomniac detective than a girl in a bad mood with an overactive imagination," Mello said. "Less humiliating for one, and probably less painful for another."

"Yeah," Matt agreed offhandedly. "S-sure. I honestly just don't want to die _period_, but I suppose that's… right."

"Well…" Mello said, his eyes traveling down to that piece of paper folded into eighths again. "As long as we're going to die soon…"

He picked up the letter again. He started to unfold it, but stopped. He dropped it on the floor.

"Can't do it, can you?" Matt said, grinning. "Chicken."

"You do it, then!"

"No!"

"Then _you're_ a chicken, too!"

"Alright," Matt said. "Fine. We're _both_ chickens. Now let's hide this stuff until we can put it back in her room."

"Right," Mello agreed. "All that chocolate made me hungry. Breakfast is about… now, right?"

Mello glanced up at the clock on the wall. Matt looked back at it and nodded. They cleaned the floor off the best that they could, paying that letter particular care, as well as her notebook.

* * *

Considering L wasn't yet there and wasn't due to arrive until lunch (Roger had informed everyone at breakfast and told them to behave themselves, taking particular care in glaring at Christie and Mello), Matt and Mello had time to think of a way to ask him for help. Of course, he and Christie were stuck on clean-up duty in the kitchens pretty much _until_ lunch, so that left Matt up to planning silently and Mello planning just as silently. Christie seemed to be trying to be in a good mood while she was washing dishes, but she was in a strange twitchy, jumpy state the whole time.

"Matt said someone broke into your room," Mello said.

"O-oh?" she said, sounding nervous. "Did he say if he had any idea who it was?"

"No," Mello said offhandedly. "Why, was something missing?"

"Only everything in my pranks drawer of my dresser…" she said with a sigh. "Someone had replaced everything with socks. _Socks_, for goodness sake!" She laughed nervously. "Isn't that just weird?"

"Yeah," Mello agreed.

"Hey… er… I feel kind of dumb having to ask this since practically everyone seems to know, but… who's L?"

"L?" Mello said. "He's the smartest to ever come out of this orphanage without having gone insane… er… at least, not _completely_ insane, he's still a bit off, it seems."

"Everyone here is," she said with a shrug.

"Well, the main goal here is basically to be named his successor. Right now, I believe you and Near are tied as far as IQ goes, give or take a point or two, I come in second, and Matt's third."

"And he's a detective, right?"

"Yeh."

"Wonder if he could figure out which of the bloody idiots here broke into my fucking room…" She looked over to see she was getting a somewhat reproachful look. "N-not that there was anything important that they took, just, like, things that could probably get me into loads of trouble?"

"Like what?"

"Explosives, for one," she said. "Some of the best, biggest fireworks you can find anywhere. Firecrackers, of course, I was planning on throwing a few of those into Roger's office one day, but now I'll probably see them ever again. Random things I've been nicking out of the kitchens and his office that could come in handy for an assortment of different jokes, loads of different things."

"Hopefully nothing personal," Mello said. "If it was one of the other girls and there was a journal in there, then everyone'll know everything about you inside of an hour."

She gulped. "Y-you think so?"

"Probably," he said. "They're brutal when they get a small bit of gossip."

_Dammit…_ Christie thought, going back to her dishes. _Now I'm almost hoping that Matt was lying and it was just him and Mello that got into it. At least one of them would be able to talk the other out of telling anyone anything about me that…_ A chill ran down her spine at the thought of everyone knowing what had happened for her to be there.

On her five minute break from washing dishes before lunch, Christie had decided to sit in the main room with one of her guitars. She had decided against an amplifier so the little kids wouldn't gather around her and start suggesting random songs that she had never heard of. Her guitar calmed her down when she didn't have an audience, but she didn't feel like being alone in her room, not with the heinous theft that had taken place their earlier still lingering in its atmosphere. She was considering skipping lunch entirely just to play guitar for a while longer. After about three minutes of playing guitar, she heard a snapping noise. She looked up to see a familiar girly-boy eating a chocolate bar.

"How much coffee have you _had_?"

"Wh– why?"

She looked down to notice that her foot was tapping as though it were trying to run a marathon in place, and her fingers were twitching over the neck of her guitar.

"Oh." She thought for a moment, her eyes rolling around for a moment before stopping in an upwardly pointed position. "Lots."

"You should probably stop."

"Why?" she demanded. "If you say it's going to stunt my growth then I swear to _God_ I'll–"

"Well, too much caffeine can give you a heart attack."

"So can too much _chocolate_."

"No it can't!"

"Yes it can."

"Can not."

"Can too."

"Can _not!_"

"What're you arguing about now?"

They both looked over at about the time she had been considering hitting Mello with her guitar. Mello was lucky that Matt had intervened _that_, or he'd have been broken in two.

"Ch… chocolate…?" Mello suggested. "I think."

"Something like that," Christie agreed, nodding.

"Oh…" Matt said, going back to his PSP. It seemed he had been hoping for something a little more interesting. "L's here," he added to Mello.

And Mello, on his mid-day chocolate high, took off like a shot. Matt looked up and looked around.

"What in the…?"

"I think Blondie's on crack," Christie said. "You might want to go find him before he tackles this 'L' person."

"Yeah, that would probably be a good idea…"

Matt turned and walked out of the room, still looking confused about the blond streak that had just flown passed his head. Christie remained there with her guitar as her company.


	6. Afraid

_Disclaimer: Same as always. You know it. If not, look on the other chapters._

_On a side note, so no confusion ensues, I will soon be changing my penname from __**Bloodstains**__ to some variation of "__**Comma**__." So it's still me. Just with a new penname :)_

* * *

"L!"

The young detective was run in to by a blond-haired boy clad in all black clothing before his red-haired friend could stop him from doing so. Mello was a bit more frantic than was usual for him, which was saying a lot. What was really strange was that Matt wasn't even playing the handheld game system he had with him, and he wasn't laughing at Mello's anxiousness. He looked just as worried. Mello started babbling incoherently the second L realized that something strange was going on.

"You've _got_ to help us or we're going to be killed– new kid– freaking _psycho_, threatened to hang us upside down by our intestines – _intestines!_ – not directly I mean, but still, that's not good and–"

"Alright– slow down– and please stop poking me, that's not getting you anywhere– quiet for a moment."

Mello shut his mouth immediately. He opened it again, but only to take a bite of chocolate. L wondered just how much chocolate Mello had ingested that day. It was obviously far too much, judging by how much he was twitching from attempting to stand still. It would probably be best not to ask….

"Matt," L said. "What's he talking about?"

"About a week or a week and a half ago, new girl got put in here. Mello seems to think she's out to get him –"

"She _is_, you heard what she said about hanging–"

"Yes, I heard it too, now shut up. As I was saying, Mello thinks she's out to get him because her IQ was matched to about the same as Near's." At the mention of such a terrible name, Mello rolled his eyes and gave an annoyed sigh. "Couple days ago, Mello said… er… _something_ that made her really mad and they went to war. Now she _is_ out to get him. They called a truce, but Mello went nuts when she completed 'stage three' of her revenge..." This coaxed a mumble of "tainted chocolate" from the blond, along with an eye-twitch, "and attempted to kill her – lucky she's fast, or she probably _would_ be dead. Because she lied to Roger about what Mello said to start the whole mess and make it seem less serious, they were only sentenced to two weeks of dishwashing. Then Mello went and ate half of his chocolate stash last night. _Everyone_ knows what happens to _him_ when he has that much chocolate in his system. Random planning without any thought about consequences. I'm dead scared to go against him when he's twitching like a homicidal maniac, so I agreed to help him with his plan."

"Which was?" L almost didn't want to know.

"Well, he decided that when she went downstairs before everyone else, we'd sneak into her room and steal her prank stuff. It was in a drawer in her dresser, and he loaded it all into a box, had me take it back into our room. And he then randomly decided that refilling the drawer with socks would be funny. We were looking through the stuff, and it _was_ mostly prank stuff, that's actually _all_ we thought it was, and I helped, but there turned out to be a few other things. More _important_ things. Things that would set _any_ sane person to homicidal-maniac mode. She figured out immediately that it was missing and asked about it through the wall, since her room's right next to ours. I lied and said Mello was asleep and I heard someone in her room but I thought it was her. So _then_ she threatened to kill whoever did it. By hanging them by their own intestines from a window or something like that."

L nodded. "What exactly was in the drawer?"

"Fireworks," Mello said. "Type of shit that could scare Roger into tossing her out of here. Mostly just random things for different sorts of pranks. Then there was a notebook with notes on guitar things – that's what made this place look into her, she's really musically inclined apparently – and it was a journal in the back – which we _didn't_ read," he added quickly. "That wasn't half as interesting as the letter, though, but I was honestly afraid to read that."

"Was weird," Matt agreed, nodding and leaning against the wall in the entrance hall. "Had bloody fingerprints all over it. Probably had to do with what happened for her to get put in here. _Probably_ why she wants to kill us."

"But she doesn't know it's you two who did this?"

"Right," Matt and Mello said at the same time.

"Alright," L said. "First of all, you're both idiots. You _don't_ break into people's rooms and take their things. That's common sense, which you both _should_ have."

"I was afraid of getting my limbs torn off by a chocolate-high maniac!" Matt protested.

"You probably could have talked him _out_ of it." Matt shrugged. "Second," he continued, "where did you hide it?"

"Matt's closet," Mello said. "In a box."

"You could sneak back in and replace the socks with the original contents of that drawer, but f you do it that way, there would still be a very high chance she would catch you. That would make her angrier than if you actually told her."

Mello laughed nervously. "_Not_ me. If _I_ tell her that _I_ did it, I'll probably get my head knocked off with a guitar."

"You? I already lied about it!" Matt said.

"Alright, she's going to kill us _both_, alright?"

"Okay. Yeah. That makes more sense. So then, who's telling her what we did?"

"You."

"No!"

L listened to the two argue over who was "going to get killed first" for a minute. It was presumable that _this_ was going to be a _fun_ stay at his old "home." After a minute, Matt and Mello had resorted to the first idea that L hadn't really meant to give them.

"Alright, it's settled," Mello said. "We'll sneak back into her room the next time she isn't there and we know it. Then, we'll put all of her stuff back and she'll never have to know what happened."

"Good plan," Matt agreed.

L sighed and decided to leave them to their planning. He already needed coffee after five minutes with those two. He managed to sneak away from them and into the kitchens, only to find that the coffee maker was already in use by someone else. That was somewhat annoying. The situation turned somewhat scary when said someone turned around at the sound of footsteps behind her and pointed a guitar at him like a lethal weapon. After a moment of silent examination, she lowered the guitar, and then turned back to the coffee maker.

"_Me disculpo_."

Well, at least she had apologized… but in Spanish? She didn't look Spanish. Judging by the guitar, this was most likely the girl that Matt and Mello had been referring to; the one that was going to kill them. It was no wonder Mello was afraid for his life. Granted, she was fairly short and only looked to be about twelve or so years old, but judging by the way he had just had that guitar pointed at him, L assumed it was possible that Mello might _actually _end up getting his head knocked off by it eventually.

"_Está bien_," L replied.

"_¿Usted es multilingüe?_" She poured coffee into a cup and waited for a response. It was amazing she could hold the coffee pot still enough to do so with how her hands were twitching.

"_S__í_…" The conversation was getting stranger by the second, mostly just do to the fact that it was in a different language than he was used to speaking around the orphanage.

"_Veo._"

She moved over and set the coffee pot on the counter and reached to a jar labeled with an _S_. L moved cautiously to the counter near where she had set the coffee pot, not particularly keen on getting a guitar pointed at him like a gun again. She reached into the jar and pulled out a rather large handful of sugar cubes. She examined them for a moment as though to count them, and dropped them all into her cup.

This had to be L. Christie was confident that she had done quite well in scaring the ever-loving crap out of him. Scaring people was fun, after all. What better way to scare a person than randomly conversing in a language that wasn't one's native language? He definitely seemed unnerved. This might not have been because of the whole Spanish-speak thing, though. It could have easily been because of the fact that she had pointed her guitar when she heard someone coming up behind her, which she had only done because she thought it was Mello. That stupid blond chocoholic had made her more paranoid than she had ever been before in her entire life. Granted, the coffee couldn't be helping her much, judging by how much she had started twitching about three cups ago, but she liked coffee. A lot.

"You do speak in English, don't you?" L asked.

She whipped her head back over to his direction, rather than out into space where it had been previously pointed. It had been a little faster than she had intended, as she had felt her neck crack rather painfully when she did so.

"Obviously," she said. "I don't believe that I particularly look like a Maria, and I definitely hope that I don't look like a Carlos. I'm assuming you're L?"

"Yes," he said. "Is there any particular reason you attempted to impale me with your guitar?"

She looked down at the guitar, and then lifted up the cup of coffee to her lips. She drained nearly half the cup in one large gulp, despite the fact that there was still steam billowing off the surface of the liquid. It did burn a bit… okay, maybe a _lot_, but it was coffee. Coffee was good.

"Do you know Mello?"

"Yes."

"I heard footsteps and thought he was attempting to sneak up on me. You're lucky I hadn't started on this cup yet, or you'd probably have been knocked on the floor by my… er… _weapon_." She held up her guitar to indicate what she was talking about, even though L probably already knew. "I don't particularly get along with Mr. Inferiority Complex. Or Miss. I'm not sure; the hair kind of puzzles me."

"Then you're the one he thinks is out to get him?"

"That would be me," she said cheerfully. She backed up to the counter behind her, set her guitar against it, and sat on the counter. "Name's Christie. Not my real name, but I'm not s'posed to tell anyone my real name according to Roger. Mello apparently thinks that I somehow cheated on an IQ test that I wasn't even aware I was going to be taken until it was handed to me."

"Mello can be like that," he said, dropping nearly twice as many sugar cubes into his coffee as she had. It was excusable. Judging by the insanely-crazy eye bags, he most likely needed it.

"What, you mean stupid?"

"Not… exactly, no. You can't really be stupid with an IQ over two hundred…"

"Unless your name is 'Mello.'"

* * *

Christie decided it would be wise to get along with Mello and Matt for long enough to figure out what Roger needed to so urgently speak with L and Watari, by listening through the door of Roger's office. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. When Roger needed to talk to them 'urgently' about something, it was always an interesting conversation. The last time, it had pertained to the subject of Near locking himself in his room for two weeks after Mello had attempted to kill _him_. Mello would have bet his entire chocolate stash, and Matt would have similarly bet all of his game systems and videogames, that this had to do with Christie.

"I somehow doubt either of you know what this is about," Roger said with a sigh. "There is a new child here at the orphanage, a girl who has decided to go by Christie. She was looked at first because of her musical aptitude, and the scores of her IQ test were higher than anyone's here, thirteen points above the previous number one here."

Mello made an irritated noise as he listened. Matt elbowed him.

"_Quiet!_" he whispered. "We're dead if they hear us out here!"

"Both of you shush," Christie whispered, sensing an argument. "Listen."

"That is why it is a regret to say that I believe this orphanage needs to be rid of her." Christie gulped – that didn't sound good. "Mello's rivalry against her is twice as bad as with Near's. This is because Near had enough common sense not to attempt to make any moves against Mello in return. Christie has. The girl has been swiping things from around the orphanage to store away and be used as tools for playing jokes on _anyone_ who bothers her, apparently. It would be a pity to transfer someone as smart, but it doesn't appear she has any friends or acquaintances yet. Mello would refuse to leave unless he was transferred with his friend Matt, and that would be a loss of _two_ of the smartest here, rather than only one."

There was a moment of silence in the room.

"Roger," L said finally, "I believe you aren't taking into account what will happen if she is transferred."

"Oh?"

"Every orphanage in the world like this one will have a child with an attitude similar to Mello's. That is unavoidable. She would continue to be transferred until she was, again, here. Would there be any point served in that?"

"There is no other way to separate her from Mello, L."

"May I remind you that your word isn't the final word?"

"Oh, sick burn," Christie whispered, suppressing a laugh as she imagined the look on Roger's face. She was immediately shushed by Mello, who she elbowed in the stomach in response.

"Watari's decision is final, as he is the owner of this orphanage," L said. "You are only substituting as caretaker in his absence."

"Y-yes, I am aware of that. Watari, sir," Roger said, "what is your opinion?"

"I believe we should consult both Mello and Christie before making any kind of decision of this nature. If they are basically civil, then I will survey them durring my week long stay to see how they act around each other and the other children."

"We already know how Mello acts," Roger said.

"Yes, and we will see if the _two_ of them act any differently towards each other than towards others. Once the week is over, I will give you my decision and further instruction. Is there anything else you needed to discuss?"

"No, sir. That was all."

"They're leaving," Mello said quietly. "Now's the best time to get the hell away before we get caught."

They managed to escape back upstairs before L, Watari, or Roger could figure out they were listening through the door. They all stopped by Christie's door.

"What now?" Matt said, looking from Mello to Christie. "If we don't do something, then someone's going to end up transferred somewhere else."

"There's one of two things going on here," she said, opening her door. "They'll be coming up here in a minute, so hurry up and get in. We've got planning to do."

With an exchanged look of confusion and a shrug, they went in through the opened door. She walked in after them.

"Keep your voices down, you never know who could be listening," she added quietly. "First off – I'm going to ask this _directly_, and I want an honest answer – do you two have anything to do with the things that went missing out of my room? You won't be hung by your intestines from anywhere if you tell the truth right _now_."

Mello gulped audibly, but managed to nod. Matt looked at Mello oddly – he'd never seen Mello actually look remotely afraid before. It was kind of funny, but the fact that both of their lives were in danger quickly cut out the hilarity of the situation.

"I said you won't be hung by your intestines, calm down." She sat down in front of her bed. "Sit." They both also sat on the floor. "I'm aware you just thought you were stealing everything I could use against you, so I'm not overly angry. But did you read anything you shouldn't have?"

"No," Mello said.

"Almost, but no."

"Good. I trust you won't in the next week. I'm sure you can guess what will happen if you do."

"W-wait," Mello said, "what do you mean, 'in the next week?' We've got to give it back, so wouldn't it be easier to –"

"Not while we're being monitored," she said. "And _keep_ your _voice_ down. If you're being monitored when you return it, then they'll know you took it in the first place, which will be a mark against both of us. We have to be extremely careful."

"Yeah," Mello agreed.

"That doesn't mean we have to act friendly with each other. You heard what Roger said; this place already knows what _you're_ like. That means they know you have an inferiority complex –"

"I do _not!_"

"– that you're generally aggressive –"

"No I'm not."

"– and that you contradict everything."

"Do not."

"Yes you do," Matt agreed. "You just disagreed with everything she said."

"That's because she's full of shit!"

"Keep quiet," she said impatiently. "You're going to have to act like you normally would. As no one really knows anything about me, I'll have to act differently. I know for a fact that I'm competitive, so I'll have to not be competitive. I can't be playing any jokes on you, or L and Watari will know that Roger isn't full of shit. We'll want to be basically civil with each other, but with a fairly regular amount of arguing so it seems more realistic, considering you argue with everyone–"

"No I don't."

"Yes you do."

"Do not!"

"See? You're arguing right now."

"Am not."

"There's a problem with that plan," Matt said suddenly, interrupting the ensuing argument. They both looked at him. "We… er… well, see, L already knows that we were the ones who stole the stuff."

"Shit…. That is a problem."

"I don't think he'll tell Watari or Roger about it – especially not Roger," Mello said. "But Watari's really smart, so there's a chance he could figure everything out himself. A high chance."

"We've still got to keep with our plan. We're going to be interviewed, probably separately, so we've got to make sure we don't say anything incriminating. That includes the fact that any of the three of us were listening outside the door. Of course, if a slight suspicion I have is right, then that won't do any good at all."

"What's that?"

"I think there's a chance they might have _known_ we were going to listen."


End file.
